I am a clinical psychologist providing online psychotherapy to clients in Colorado and Texas and office-based psychotherapy in Colorado's Vail Valley.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

What One Jill Learned From Another: on Skiing and Recovery from Spinal Cord Injury

What one Jill learned from another: on Skiing and recovery
from Spinal Cord Injury

“Courage doesn’t
always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that
says, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’” Mary Anne Radmacher

When I was a
teenager, I was looking through the TV Guide and saw that the Sunday Night
Movie was about a teenager named Jill who suffered a ski accident. I’d never been skiing but I didn’t know too
many other Jills so I thought I would watch the movie. It was a life changing experience. As some of you may guess, the movie was
called “The Other Side of The Mountain” and it was about a skier name Jill
Kinmont.

Jill Kinmont
Boothe was the national women's slalom champion and on the cover of Sports
Illustrated when she competed in a 1955 race to qualify for the U.S. Olympic ski
team. Speeding down an icy Utah ski slope, she lost control, struck a
spectator, crashed and hit a tree. She broke her neck and suffered high level quadriplegia.

I was transfixed
by her story. She suffered multiple
tragedies beyond her initial injury and yet her strength and resilience kept
rebounding and she found ways to go on with a meaningful and productive life,
although she never skied again. I read
her books and watched the movie’s sequel.
I thought she was amazing.
Whenever I felt like I couldn’t do something because it was too hard, I
imagined how she pushed herself and I pushed myself too. I also became fascinated with skiing, which
I’d never tried. I learned to ski and
fell in love with the sport.

In 1982, I was
spending a research year at Stanford while getting my doctorate from USC. I was driving my car on El Camino Real in
Mountain View California. The person
driving the car behind me didn’t realize I was stopped at a red light. He slammed into me going 35 miles per
hour. Initially, I thought I was fine
and I went home. In the morning, I
awakened with pain and numbness in my hands and arms. X-rays at Stanford University Hospital (this
was pre-MRI) revealed a C-7 “clay-shovelers” fracture. I cried when I thought about skiing and the
bike that I might never ride again. And
then I remembered Jill Kinmont. If she
could prevail I could too.

This sparked my
lifelong interest in behavioral medicine and rehabilitation psychology. By the end of 1983, I was back on my bike and
the following winter I was back on my skis.
I chose to specialize in spinal cord injury psychology and chronic pain
management during my psychology residency.
In 1990, I took a job as the psychologist on the Spinal Cord Injury Unit
at the VA Hospital in San Antonio, TX.
In 1997, I spoke at the American Association of Spinal Cord Injury
Psychologists and Social Workers conference.
The speaker who followed my talk was Jill Kinmont Booth. After she finished, I walked up to her put
out my hand to shake hers (she had learned a graceful way to do this, as many
people with quadriplegia do). I said “Hi
Jill, I’m Jill and I’ve been wanting to meet you since I was a young teenager.” I got to spend time with her and her husband,
snapped some priceless photos and was able to share my story. It was a wonderful moment for us both.

Jill Kinmont Boothe
(who sadly passed away this February at the age of 75) and I were both
featured speakers at the American Association of Spinal Cord Injury
Professionals conference in September 1997 in Las Vegas, NV

On Christmas Eve 2001, I suddenly experienced the spontaneous
rupture of two discs in my cervical spine at C4-5 and C5-6. I had an emergency discectomy and fusion the
first week in January and had to start my rehabilitation from scratch with
significant weakness, some neurological symptoms and pain. I was able to see and read my MRIs so I knew
what damage Dr. Swan had to fix. Little
pieces of the ruptured discs had to be delicately extricated from my spinal
cord before the fusion could take place.
I adjusted my attitude in the positive direction and spent the time prior to my surgery visualizing the upcoming repair and restoration of my
spinal cord.

Post-up, Dr. Swan came to check on me shaking his head. When he realized he’d frightened me he
quickly clarified my misperception. He
said “Its remarkable. What I saw when I
went in bore only slight resemblance to what the MRI showed. I actually made them pull a fresh copy of the
films to verify I had the right patients films and I did. The site I was operating on was much cleaner
and easier to work with than I had been lead to believe from the imaging
studies. As a result, a projected 4+
hour surgery was successfully completed in 90 minutes.”

When I had awakened from the anesthesia, I could move my
arms and feel my fingers again. And Dr.
Swan had (appropriately, given his name) appreciated the importance of a lovely
neck so he brought in a top plastic surgeon to close my incision. Usually a dry pragmatic man, my neurosurgeon
was floored by my amazing recovery. I
went through extensive PT (at Health South where the San Antonio Spurs go) to
overcome weakness in my arms and a drop foot on the right. Once again, I had been told “no more skiing”.

I finally got to test my compliance to the doctor’s order
last year when we came to use our time share in Avon Colorado and ski at Beaver
Creek. I was apprehensive. I relished the cold smoothness of my skis as I
put them on and the satisfying snap as the boots locked into the bindings, I
took it easy and only got a bunny slope ticket to give a nod to caution. I got to the top of the slope, pointed my
skis in the right direction and ‘woosh', I was flying. For the first time in over 20 years I have my
own equipment again and nothing except common sense will hold me back. I’m a skier again and I’m a skier who now
lives in the Vail Valley. A dream come
true!